UPDATE: [Gender Studies] Queer Autobiography- Last week

The Queer_at_Kingâ€™s Research Centre presents a one-day conference on queerautobiography:

TELL IT LIKE IT IS. TELL IT LIKE IT ISNâ€™T â€" QUEER LIVES REMODELLED

Friday June 12th 2009

â€˜Tell It Like It Is. Tell It Like It Isnâ€™tâ€™ continues on from 2004â€™ssuccessful â€˜Queer Livesâ€™ symposium which examined the ways we chroniclethe varied stories of our multiple queer selves. There are still morestories to be told.

Virginia Woolf called the â€˜Iâ€™ a â€˜straight dark barâ€™ privileging aheterosexual male, white, and middle-class subjectivity. Should queernegotiate its own â€˜Iâ€™ to move away from the heteronormative â€˜Iâ€™ and out ofthe shadow that falls behind it? In the last century gay men and lesbianshave creatively responded to the problem of life-writing in a world stillhostile to these narratives. Strategies include the telling of stories ascase histories to medical practitioners and the blurring of fiction andfact to create a self-mythology for authors such as Jean Genet and AudreLorde. But this does not make up for all those life stories which havebeen lost either to history or to the homonormative narrative of thecoming-out story. Should verisimilitude be an issue as someautobiographers seek to not only reclaim these lost lives but their ownlives? Other gay, lesbian, transgendered and queer people use alternativetactics that profit from a non-reliance on the written word in order totell their lives. Does a life recreated in painting, film or performancering truer than a life rendered in writing? Or is a queer and performativestyle of writing the best way to represent our queer and performativeselves? Does the privileging of the individual subject inevitablyperpetuate the narrative of isolation and disrupt possibilities forcollective stories?

Possible Topics-Queer Performance Art/ Live Art and autobiography-Queer autobiography and new technology- blogging, podcasts, cctv etc.-A queer life told in pictures, in film, or in music-Alternative modes of self-representation which move away from Westerntraditions-Appropriation and portrayal of older ways of living, which can influencethe queer in todayâ€™s society.-Transgendered autobiography-Antiretroviral autobiography-The rise in celebrity gay and lesbian autobiography-Autobiography and queer temporalities-Future (or is there no future?) queer autobiographical possibilities.

Papers are invited for a series of panels throughout the day finishingwith a plenary. Key Speakers to be announced. Submissions from all fieldsof the arts and humanities are invited. Please note that the panels willconsist of twenty-minute papers. Please send abstracts (300 words) toRichard Maguire at paul.maguire_at_kcl.ac.uk by November 30 2008This event will be free, but places are limited.This Conference is organised by Queer_at_Kingâ€™s with financial support fromthe Roberts fund and help from the Lifewriting Centre at Kingâ€™s.